September 12, 2005
Facta, Non Verba Posted by Julie M. Fenster at 02:05 PM EST At 9:05 a.m. on December 6, 1917, an ammunition ship called the Mont Blanc blew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, causing a chain reaction among the many other explosives boats crowding the harbor and obliterating one and a half square miles of the small city. A man-made tidal wave followed. More than 1,600 people out of the population of about 45,000 were killed instantly; 9,000 were badly injured by the force of the explosion or by pieces of ships and the city raining down on them. Many of the rest were homeless. At 9:00 p.m. on December 6, 1917—just twelve hours later—a train loaded with medical supplies left Boston for Halifax. That was only the start; the next day, the Bostonians were really prepared. They sent a special train to Halifax, carrying all of the equipment and furniture needed for a 500-bed emergency hospital. Also aboard were 25 physicians, 68 nurses, eight orderlies, and two obstetricians. The inclusion of the obstetricians (in what seemed to be strictly a trauma situation) surprised the people in Halifax, until they found themselves inundated with premature births over the subsequent week. The Bostonians had anticipated that. A few days later, when Boston’s good Samaritans heard that a blizzard was headed for Halifax, they took it upon themselves to send 837 cases of glass, putty, and tools and twenty-five glaziers to reinstall the windows blown out by the explosion. The response from Boston, entirely unbidden, casts shame on all of us who sat by the television, waiting for the U.S. government to act in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Of course, the crisis cast sickening shame on the government. But it was no shining hour for individual initiative, either.
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